The title gestures toward the politics of border control, but the novel’s focus is more about how fear and grievance calcify within ordinary lives.

Published in 2017, No More Boats is a sharply observed novel set in contemporary Western Sydney. Through the figure of Antonio Martone — an Italian migrant who arrived as a child — Castagna examines generational tension, migrant aspiration, and the rhetoric of belonging in modern Australia.

The book sits within a strand of recent Australian fiction concerned with migration, class mobility, and cultural inheritance, it is a thoughtful, discussion-worthy novel that resonates locally. However, the themes are relevant regardless of where you call home.

Ironic really too, how it won the Prime Minister's Literary award, take that as you will.